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Disagreements remain on short-term rental ordinance in historic neighborhood
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BATON ROUGE - The debate over regulating short-term rental properties, like Airbnb, will continue for at least a few more months after a new draft ordinance was released Thursday.
Councilwoman Tara Wicker has been working with homeowners and several organizations to craft parish-wide rules related to short-term rentals. This latest draft comes after previous versions caught flack.
"We just made sure we solidified the issues of parking," Wicker said. "We solidified the process for permitting. We made sure people realized the actual cost."
A lot of the residents giving input live in Spanish Town. While some aren't happy with the details of the proposal, they also don't like how it was crafted.
"My fear is we're gonna make an ordinance and it's gonna be like the 5G," Spanish Town resident, Marie Constantin, said. "We're gonna be back rewriting the ordinance because there aren't enough people feeling the pain."
Wicker plans to introduce an item to the Metro Council asking the planning commission to study short term rental regulations. She says a final ordinance probably won't go before the council for another five or six months.
"Short-term rental has been here in our city much longer than anybody probably recognizes," Wicker said. "It's been here for a long time. The issue is it hasn't been regulated."
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